University of Virginia Library

Problem Drinking

At a University whose students have often
taken greater pride in consuming liquor
than in consuming learning, the recent statement
by the American Medical Association
that alcoholism is the nation's third greatest
health problem may come as an uncomfortable
surprise.

This year, however, for the first time
alcoholism pushed cancer into third place,
to be surpassed itself only by heart disease
and mental illness.

The problem is especially relevant not
only in Charlottesville where the ABC stores
do such a land-office business but in the
country as a whole in light of the just
published report "Alcohol Problems" by the
Cooperative Commission on the Study of
Alcoholism, a group of doctors and scientists
at Stanford University.

In the words of one reviewer, "the
purpose of this important book is nothing
less than a total revolution in the way
Americans think, feel and act about
alcohol."

That such a "total revolution" is needed
seems unpleasantly obvious. Only the most
unperceptive student could fail to name at
least one of his friends—or one of his
teachers—for whom alcohol has ceased to be
a "social" drink and has become an end in
itself. According to Drew Pearson, even the
U.S. Senate is plagued with problem
drinkers. And according to the commission's
report, drink may well be the most
serious of the middle class illnesses, for so
often death reports are falsified with such
euphemisms as hepatitis or heart disease
when the real killer was alcohol.

The commission recognizes two major
problems blocking any successful attempt
to deal with the disease.

The first is the American's guilty attitude
towards drink. Perhaps the result of Prohibition
or a Puritan past, the average
American drinker hides his nervous obsession
for alcohol behind jokes about Dean
Martin or behind the Madison Avenue-created
mystique in which getting drunk is
regarded as a proof of virility.

It seems to us that this attitude is particularly
evident at the University, where
drinking is carried on in an embarrassingly
self-conscious manner and where "really
blowing it out" on a weekend is somehow
sanctified as a Jeffersonian tradition.

As the report says, for many Americans,
drinking "is not usually associated with
another activity; rather its specific purpose
if often 'having fun' or 'escape.' Far from
being positively connected with deep-seated
cultural and moral values it is associated
with the residual uneasiness about the enjoyment
of pleasure, an attitude still widespread
in America."

The second problem concerns the failure
of the American people—including the
psychiatrists and sociologists who should
know better—to realize the effect of alcohol
on life in America. "Heart disease, cancer,
schizophrenia and delinquency are not
completely understood either," the report
states, "yet a community which responded
to these conditions as it responds to problem
drinking would be considered medieval
and a national disgrace."

The report's recommendations make interesting
reading. There is the expected
call for a national effort to educate people
about the disease of alcoholism and to
provide help for those afflicted. Most
interesting of all is the commission's suggestion
for taking the "kicks" aspect out
of drinking: do away with the minimum
age for drinking, or at least make it at
age 18. It seems that problem drinking
is found the least among Jewish and Italian
families which indoctrinate their children
into a pattern of truly social drinking at
an early age and who set guidelines about
how much consumption is acceptable.

With the compulsive drinker almost a
national institution and with so many social
anxieties in the modern urban world pushing
men and women toward drink, we can be
skeptical about the good the report "Alcohol
Problems" will do. But the commission
faces its task realistically and remembers
that it took 40 years before birth
control could be discussed publicly with
understanding and objectivity.

As for the University, we certainly don't
wish a Carrie Nation to swing her axe in
the fraternity bars or the ABC stores.

What we do need is a more mature,
less self-conscious attitude toward alcohol.
Drinking is synonymous with civilization,
for many persons rightfully cannot imagine
a celebration without champagne, a good
steak without a good Bordeaux, or a
pleasant evening without a number of drinks.
In Virginia the tradition of drinking seems
particularly well established, since William
Byrd II's time at least, perhaps because
in the Commonwealth there has been so
little else to do.

What the University needs, though,
whether anyone here reads "Alcohol Problems"
or not, is less of the social pressure
toward massive consumption that leads to
senseless destruction and emotional injury
for everyone involved.